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Feedback on second language students' writing
Hyland, K; Hyland, F
Language Teaching, 2006, v. 39 n. 2, p. 83-101
2006
http://hdl.handle.net/10722/57356
Language Teaching. Copyright © Cambridge University
Press.
State-of-the-art article
Feedback on second language students’ writing
Ken Hyland Institute of Education, University of London
k.hyland@ioe.ac.uk
Fiona Hyland University of Hong Kong
fhyland@hkucc.hku.hk
Feedback is widely seen as crucial for encouraging and
consolidating learning, and this significance has also
been recognised by those working in the field of second
language (L2) writing. Its importance is acknowledged in
process-based classrooms, where it forms a key element of
the students’ growing control over composing skills, and
by genre-oriented teachers employing scaffolded learning
techniques. In fact, over the past twenty years, changes
in writing pedagogy and research have transformed
feedback practices, with teacher written comments often
supplemented with peer feedback, writing workshops,
conferences, and computer-delivered feedback. But while
feedback is a central aspect of ESL/EFL writing
programs across the world, the research literature has
not been unequivocally positive about its role in writing
development, and teachers often have a sense that they
are not making use of its full potential. In this paper
we examine recent research related to feedback on L2
students’ writing, focusing on the role of feedback in
writing instruction and discussing current issues relating
to teacher written and oral feedback, collaborative peer
feedback and computer-mediated feedback.
Feedback has long been regarded as essential for
the development of second language (L2) writing
skills, both for its potential for learning and for
student motivation. In process-based, learner-centred
classrooms, for instance, it is seen as an important
developmental tool moving learners through multiple
drafts towards the capability for effective selfexpression. From an interactionist perspective it is
regarded as an important means of establishing the
significance of reader responses in shaping meanings
(Probst 1989). In genre classrooms feedback is a
key element of the scaffolding provided by the
teacher to build learner confidence and the literacy
resources to participate in target communities. In
fact, over the past twenty years, changes in writing
pedagogy and insights gained from research studies
have transformed feedback practices, with teacher
written comments now often combined with peer
feedback, writing workshops, oral-conferences, or
computer-delivered feedback. Summative feedback,
focusing on writing as a product, has generally been
replaced or supplemented by formative feedback
which points forward to the student’s future writing
and the development of his or her writing processes.
But while feedback is a central aspect of L2 writing
programs across the world, the research literature
has not been unequivocally positive about its role in
writing development, and teachers often have a sense
that they are not making use of its full potential. Many
questions relating to feedback remain unanswered or
only partially addressed: Does it make a difference to
students’ writing? If so, in what areas? What is the best
way of delivering feedback? Can error correction and
form focused feedback have long term benefits on
students’ writing? Can technology play a greater part
in delivering feedback? What role can peer feedback
play in writing development? How far does culture
play a part in student responses to feedback? How
can teacher feedback enhance students’ ability to
independently reflect on their writing? What are the
implications of feedback for teacher control and text
KEN HYLAND is Professor of Education and Head
of the Centre for Academic and Professional Literacies
at the Institute of Education, University of London. He
has considerable experience teaching and researching first
and second language writing and has published over one
hundred articles and ten books on writing and applied
linguistics. Recent titles are Teaching and researching
writing (Longman, 2002), Second language writing
(Cambridge University Press, 2003), Genre and
second language writing (University of Michigan
Press, 2004) and Metadiscourse (Continuum, 2005).
Professor Ken Hyland, School of Culture, Language and
Communication, Institute of Education, University of
London, 20 Bedford Way, London WC1H 0AL, UK.
k.hyland@ioe.ac.uk
FIONA HYLAND has a Ph.D. from Victoria
University of Wellington, New Zealand, on the subject
of feedback in second language writing and is a lecturer in
the Faculty of Education at the University of Hong Kong,
where she coordinates the ELT specialism of the Masters
in Education programme. She has 25 years of experience
teaching and researching in the areas of TESOL and
teacher education, and has published a number of papers
on the subject of feedback to ESL writers.
Dr Fiona Hyland, Faculty of Education, University of
Hong Kong, Pok Fu Lam Road, Hong Kong. fhyland@
hkucc.hku.hk
Lang. Teach. 39, 83–101. doi:10.1017/S0261444806003399 Printed in the United Kingdom
c 2006
Cambridge University Press
83
K. Hyland & F. Hyland
appropriation? This paper reviews recent research
which addresses these questions by focusing on
teacher written and oral feedback, peer conferencing
and computer-mediated feedback. The volume of
this research means that we are forced to focus on L2
learners of English, although the issues are common
to studies of learners of other languages.
1. Teacher written feedback
Despite increasing emphasis on oral response and the
use of peers as sources of feedback, teacher written
response continues to play a central role in most
L2 and foreign language (FL) writing classes. Many
teachers feel they must write substantial comments
on papers to provide a reader reaction to students’
efforts, to help them improve as writers and to justify
the grade they have been given (K. Hyland 2003).
Research in the 1980s and early 1990s, however,
began to question the effectiveness of teacher feedback as a way of improving students’ writing. Early research on native English speakers (L1) suggested that
much written feedback was of poor quality and was
frequently misunderstood by students, being vague,
inconsistent and authoritarian, overly concerned
with error and often functioning to appropriate, or
take over, student texts by being too directive (e.g.
Knoblauch & Brannon 1981; Connors & Lunsford
1993; see also Ferris (2003: chapter 1) for a review).
While Zamel (1985) painted a similarly bleak picture
in L2 contexts, it is important to note that feedback
research was in its infancy at that time and ideas of best
practice in both giving feedback and designing studies
to describe it were fairly rudimentary. More recent
empirical research suggests that feedback does lead to
writing improvements and this section highlights this
research.
1.1 Responding to error
A substantial amount of the research on teacher
written feedback in L2 writing contexts has been
concerned with error correction and whether this benefits students’ writing development. Research in this
area has sought to explore whether error correction
is effective and what strategies and treatments teachers
use for error correction, and to discover the effects
correction has on students’ immediate revisions and
their longer term development as writers.
One line of argument, influenced by process
theories, claims that feedback on error to L2 students
is discouraging and generally fails to produce any
improvements in their subsequent writing (Robb,
Ross & Shortreed 1986; Kepner 1991; Sheppard
1992; Polio, Fleck & Leder 1998; Fazio 2001). In
a well-known summary of this literature, Truscott
(1996) saw very little benefit in this kind of feedback
and argued strongly that it was the responsibility of
teachers to change student attitudes regarding what
they should expect from teacher response by adopting
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a ‘correction-free approach’ in their classrooms
(Truscott 1996, 1999). Recently, he responded to
Chandler’s (2003) experimental study, which found
that the accuracy of students’ writing improved
significantly over a semester when they corrected
their errors after feedback than when they did not.
Truscott (2004: 342) queried Chandler’s findings
and reiterated that error correction may not just be
ineffective, but even harmful to students’ fluency and
their overall writing quality, arguing that the time
spent dealing with errors in class is better spent on
additional writing practice.
Teachers have been reluctant to follow this advice,
however, as they are acutely aware that accuracy in
writing is important to academic and professional
audiences and that so-called ‘L2 errors’ often
stigmatize writers (Horowitz 1986; Johns 1995; James
1998). They also feel that they should respond to the
needs of students themselves, who see error-free work
as very important. Research on student preferences
has consistently found that students expect teachers
to comment on their written errors and are frustrated
if this does not happen (Cohen & Cavalcanti 1990;
Leki 1991; Hedgcock & Lefkowitz 1994; Cumming
1995; Ferris 1995; F. Hyland 1998; Ferris & Roberts
2001; Lee 2004).
In addition, it has been argued that the research
on the lack of effectiveness of error feedback is not
nearly as conclusive as Truscott claims (e.g. Polio
1997; Ferris 1999, 2002, 2003, 2004). Statements
that teachers’ error feedback is often incomplete,
arbitrary and inaccurate, for instance (e.g. Zamel
1985; Connors & Lunsford 1993), have simply not
been consistently demonstrated empirically. Clearly,
teacher variation is a crucial issue in both feedback
and in the design of classroom research and little can
be said on the basis of a few studies. Lee’s (2004)
finding that half of her sample of Hong Kong teachers
corrected errors inaccurately, for example, was based
on a de-contextualised teacher correction task, while
Ferris’ (2006) more naturalistic in situ study found
teacher feedback to be overwhelmingly accurate.
Further research into the linguistic knowledge and
backgrounds of teachers whose first language is not
English may go some way to help explain such
variations in feedback practices.
In fact, it is difficult to draw clear conclusions
and generalizations from the literature as a result of
varied populations, treatments and research designs.
As we shall discuss below, written feedback is more
than marks on a page, yet research procedures often
remove it from the real classrooms and teacherstudent relationships within which it occurs (see F.
Hyland & K. Hyland 2001; Goldstein 2005).
Moreover, while marking mechanical errors can be
frustrating, the view that there is no direct connection
between correction and learning is greatly
overstated. Master (1995), for instance, found that
corrective feedback was effective when combined
■
Feedback on L2 students’ writing
with classroom discussions. Fathman & Whalley
(1990) found positive effects for rewriting from feedback on both grammar and content and Ferris (2006)
discovered that about 80% of students in her L2
sample were able to successfully edit errors marked by
teachers in a subsequent draft, with only 10% making
incorrect changes. But demonstrating that a student
can utilize teacher feedback to successfully edit from
one draft of a paper to the next tells us little about
the learner’s successful acquisition of the linguistic
features addressed by the feedback (Truscott 1996).
The few studies that have looked beyond the
immediate corrections in a subsequent draft, however, have noted improvements in students’ language
accuracy (Polio et al. 1998; F. Hyland 2003; Chandler
2003). Ferris (2006), for instance, showed that
students made statistically significant reductions in
their total number of errors over a semester in five
major grammar categories with a particular reduction
in verb and lexical errors. These results underline
the importance of general language proficiency and
metalingusitic awareness in writing development and
support Yates & Kenkel’s (2002) argument that both
error correction and its effectiveness must be seen in
the context of a student’s evolving mastery of overall
text construction.
It is also worth pointing out that many studies
of feedback on error have ignored how language
acquisition occurs, although the influence of feedback on the learner’s long term writing development
fits closely with the SLA research (Goldstein, p.c).
SLA studies indicate that second language acquisition
takes place gradually over time and that mistakes are
an important part of the highly complex developmental process of acquiring the target language. In
fact, there may be a U-shaped course of development
(Ellis 1997) where learners are initially able to
use the correct forms, only to regress later, before
finally using them according to the target language
norms (e.g. Doughty & Long 2003). We cannot,
in other words, expect that a target form will be
acquired either immediately or permanently after
it has been highlighted through feedback. Even
though explicit feedback can play an important role
in second language acquisition, it needs time and
repetition before it can help learners to notice correct
forms, compare these with their own interlanguage
and test their hypotheses about the target language.
Attempting to establish a direct relationship between
corrective feedback and successful acquisition of
a form is, therefore, over-simplistic and highly
problematic (e.g. Carson 2001; Ferris 2003).
While feedback alone will not be responsible for
improvement in language accuracy, it is likely to be
one important factor. One key variable here is the
type of error feedback that is given, and a number of
researchers have compared direct feedback, where the
teacher makes an explicit correction, with indirect
forms where he or she simply indicates that an error
has been made by means of an underline, circle, code,
etc. The role of explicitness in student uptake, or
response to feedback, is important as while indirect
error feedback may encourage learner reflection
and self-editing (Lalande 1982), lower proficiency
students may be unable to identify and correct errors
even when they have been marked for them (Ferris
& Hedgcock 2005).
Findings on feedback type have been conflicting,
largely due to the widely varying student populations,
types of writing and feedback practices examined
and the diverse research designs employed. Lalande
(1982), for instance, reported a reduction in student
errors with indirect feedback and Robb et al. (1986)
discovered minimal long-term gains in accuracy
compared with direct feedback practices. In a textual
study of over 5,000 teacher comments, Ferris (2006)
found that students utilized direct feedback more
consistently and effectively than indirect types, partly
as it involves simply copying the teacher’s suggestion
into the next draft of their papers. However, less
explicit forms of feedback also led to accurate
revisions most of the time and this occurred whether
underlined errors were coded or not. Ferris notes,
however, that students’ short-term ability to edit
some types of errors which were directly marked
by feedback did not always translate into longterm improvement, while indirect feedback seemed
to help them develop more over time. While this
may be a discouraging finding for many teachers
looking for evidence that their students are becoming
more proficient writers, the importance of immediate
improvement of drafts cannot be underestimated.
Another issue is whether different types of errors
‘respond’ differently to error treatment. Ferris (1999)
suggests that some errors, such as problems with
verbs, subject-verb agreement, run-ons, fragments,
noun endings, articles, pronouns, and possibly
spelling, can be considered ‘treatable’, because they
‘occur in a patterned, rule-governed way’. In
contrast, errors such as word choice and word order
are ‘untreatable’, in that ‘there is no handbook or set
of rules students can consult to avoid or fix those
types of errors’ (1999: 6). Teachers tend to mark
‘treatable’ errors indirectly and ‘untreatable’ errors
directly (Ferris 2006) and this is probably because
they believe that students are unable to self-correct
untreatable errors marked indirectly (Ferris 2006).
Moreover, while students seem to be able to improve
their language accuracy through feedback on form if
they are taught the rules governing directly ‘treatable’
errors (Ferris 1999), idiosyncratic errors are more
amenable to indirect feedback techniques, such as
locating the type of error and asking students to
correct it themselves (Ferris & Roberts 2001).
Overall, students appear to attend to teacher error
corrections and in most cases use them to make
accurate changes in their texts. This seems to facilitate
student writing improvement both in the short term
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K. Hyland & F. Hyland
and over time, although it must be admitted that longitudinal studies rarely span more than one semester.
Improvements seem to be more likely if feedback
is related to instruction and if indirect feedback
methods are used. This last point might relate to SLA
research which suggests that students need to invest
more effort in processing the input they receive and
are forced to notice discrepancies in their own work
and the correct pattern they are trying to employ (see
Gass & Selinker 2001; Mitchell & Myles 2004).
1.2 Teacher stances and feedback
practices
Another key area of investigation has been the
stance teachers take towards students’ texts and the
relationship they build with their learners when
giving feedback. It has long been recognised that
teachers approach texts with a number of different
purposes in mind and that these may change with
different assignments, different students and different
drafts (Bates, Lane & Lange 1993). Thus commentary
on a draft is likely to serve more immediate
pedagogical goals than that given on a final product,
for instance, and process approaches mandate that
teachers should comment on ideas in earlier drafts and
on grammar in later drafts (e.g. Zamel 1985). Several
researchers have observed, however, that because
meaning is only realised through language, the
content-form distinction creates a false dichotomy
(K. Hyland 2003; Ferris & Hedgcock 2005), and
research has shown that varying this recommended
‘meaning before form’ pattern seems to make little
difference to the quality of final products (Ashwell
2000). Outside the language class, of course, feedback
is less concerned with the development of writing
proficiency and more with appraising how students
have processed content: writing is merely a medium
by which students are judged on what they know of
specific subject knowledge.
Teachers, moreover, do not simply respond to
grammar or content but have other purposes.
Teachers adopt various commenting strategies which
vary according to the type of essay assigned, the
point of the semester in which feedback is given,
and the proficiency of the student (Ferris 1997;
Ferris et al. 1997). Ferris et al. (1997), for instance,
distinguished eight broad functions of response in
1500 teacher comments, ranging from ‘Asking for
unknown information’ to ‘Giving information on
ideas’. More simply, F. Hyland & K. Hyland (2001)
and K. Hyland & F. Hyland (2006b) collected these
purposes under the overarching functions of praise,
criticism and suggestions, where suggestion and
criticism are opposite ends of a continuum ranging
from a focus on what is done poorly to a plan of
action for its improvement.
We should also note that written feedback is not
purely informational, for although the commentary
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may facilitate writing development it will only
be effective if it engages with the writer. One
increasingly studied social factor of this kind has been
the ways teachers seek to structure activities through
a course to ensure that students are able to interpret
and use their comments effectively. Several studies
have shown that feedback is not simply disembodied
reference to student texts but an interactive part of
the whole context of learning, helping to create
a productive interpersonal relationship between the
teacher and individual students (F. Hyland 1998;
Conrad & Goldstein 1999; F. Hyland & K. Hyland
2001). F. Hyland (1998, 2000a) and K. Hyland &
F. Hyland (2006b), for instance, observed a close
relationship between written and oral feedback and
instruction, finding that the points made through
explicit teaching were picked up and reinforced by
written feedback and then recycled in both peer
and student-teacher oral interactions. One way of
establishing this link has been to encourage students
to revise papers based on feedback and incorporate
both final versions and drafts in a portfolio (Song
& August 2002; Hamp-Lyons 2006). This allows
teachers to observe students’ development, improve
their own practices by judging students’ uptake
of feedback, and create a closer relationship with
learners.
In addition, by using mechanisms such as
cover sheets (Leki 1990), questionnaires, or writer
autobiographies (Goldstein 2004) teachers are able to
reveal student feedback preferences to enhance the
effectiveness of their commentary and the students’
revisions. In a longitudinal study, K. Hyland & F.
Hyland (2006b) found that teachers did not simply
mark a text but used information about the student
to contextualise the writing being done, the strengths
and weaknesses of the individual student, and his
or her explicit requests for particular kinds of help.
To assist them, the two teachers studied not only
made considerable use of the data provided in the
cover sheets that students submitted with each piece
of writing, but also considered the personality and
possible response of the individual student to specific
feedback points. This vividly illustrates that teachers
do not give feedback in a vacuum but create a context
for their remarks, making use of what they know of
the writer to create an interpersonal link and target
feedback to their personality and needs.
Another aspect of the teacher-learner relationship
now beginning to receive attention is how teachers
select appropriate language and style in their feedback
to construct the kinds of relationships which can
facilitate a student’s writing development (F. Hyland
& K. Hyland 2001; K. Hyland & F. Hyland 2006b).
Essentially, teachers have to weigh their choice of
comments to accomplish informational, pedagogic,
and interpersonal goals simultaneously while taking
account of likely student reactions. Negative feedback
may have a detrimental effect on writer confidence
■
while premature and gratuitous praise can confuse
students and discourage revisions (F. Hyland & K.
Hyland 2001). Teachers often praise frequently as a
means of building students’ confidence, but students
expect to receive constructive criticism rather than
simple platitudes (Ferris 1995; F. Hyland 1998).
Teachers also seek to mitigate the full force of
their criticisms and suggestions by the use of hedges,
question forms, and personal attribution and to be
more reticent about criticising students’ ideas than
their language choices (F. Hyland & K. Hyland
2001; K. Hyland & F. Hyland 2006b). However,
while mitigation may foster a cooperative pedagogical
environment, its indirect approach also carries the
very real danger that students may miss the point of
the comment or misinterpret the feedback (F. Hyland
2001b; K. Hyland & F. Hyland 2006b). The choice
between promoting positive affect or confronting
writing weaknesses may be decided by targeting
some errors only and leaving others to later drafts
or assignments, but this certainly presents a serious
dilemma for writing teachers who have to rely mainly
on their experience and knowledge of their students.
1.3 Student views on teacher feedback
Attempts have been made to find out more about
students’ perspectives on teacher response, mainly
through questionnaire research. Surveys of students’
feedback preferences generally indicate that ESL
students greatly value teacher written feedback and
consistently rate it more highly than alternative forms
such as peer and oral feedback (Radecki & Swales
1988; Leki 1991; Enginarlar 1993; Saito 1994; Ferris
1995; Zhang 1995). Although most surveys show
that students want teacher feedback to highlight
their grammatical errors, some indicate that they also
want teachers to give them feedback on the content
and ideas in their writing. (Hedgcock & Lefkowitz
1994, 1996). Studies also suggest that students like
to receive written feedback in combination with
other sources, including conferences (Arndt 1993;
Hedgcock & Lefkowitz 1994) and are positive about
receiving indirect feedback on errors, giving them
clues rather than corrections since they recognize that
it encourages them to be more active in their use of
feedback (Arndt 1993; Saito 1994; F. Hyland 2001a).
While most research has focused on feedback given
by EFL or ESL writing teachers at undergraduate
or pre-university levels, recent research has focused
on feedback to L2 graduate students, particularly by
disciplinary faculty. Prior’s (1995, 1998) studies, for
instance, looked at feedback from peers and faculty
on writing in graduate geography and sociology
courses, showing how the writing tasks and the
faculty’s response were shaped by the experiences,
activities and goals the participants brought to and
created within the seminars. Riazi’s (1997) study of
four Iranian graduate students in education showed
Feedback on L2 students’ writing
that the students viewed feedback as important for
improving their understanding of their discipline, but
also saw form-based comments as a way of developing
their L2. It may be, however, that students receive
fewer form-focused comments than they wish. Zhu’s
(2004) survey, for example, suggests that faculty saw
themselves primarily as providers of content-based
summative feedback and regarded formative feedback
on writing as the job of writing instructors.
Leki (2006) has looked at feedback given by faculty
to L2 graduate students in a US university, analysing
the written comments made by disciplinary faculty
on student assignments and interviewing students to
investigate their opinions about the value of written
feedback in their development of disciplinary literacy.
Most students reported that they found the feedback
very useful but many also said they would have
liked even more, especially feedback helping them
to identify problems and giving them information
about academic and disciplinary expectations. They
also wanted feedback on how native speakers would
express the same ideas, suggesting that – like Riazi’s
students – they wanted their feedback to have a
dual content/language focus. There is a need for
more investigations to address questions on how L2
instructors and disciplinary faculty can work together
more closely to meet students’ needs.
1.4 Impact of teacher written feedback
on students’ writing
Although L2 students themselves are positive about
teacher written feedback, its contribution to writing
development is still unclear, both in terms of its
immediate impact on revisions to drafts and of the
longer term development of their writing skills.
Studies suggest that students may ignore or misuse
teacher commentary when revising drafts. Sometimes
they misunderstand it (Ferris 1995; Conrad &
Goldstein 1999), or they understand the problems
pointed out but are unable to come up with a suitable
revision (Ferris 1997; Conrad & Goldstein 1999),
and sometimes this causes them to simply delete the
offending text to avoid the issues raised (F. Hyland
1998).
There is also the issue of whether student
revisions in response to feedback improve their
writing. Research is not conclusive on this as it
is difficult to claim a direct causal relationship
between feedback and revision since both take place
within a complex of contextual factors which can
influence the extent and success of revision after
feedback (Conrad & Goldstein 1999; Goldstein
2006). Research into feedback, however, ‘has largely
been non-contextual and non-social, focused largely
on texts and conducted within a linear model of
teacher respond and student revise’ (Goldstein 2001:
77).
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K. Hyland & F. Hyland
Much of the research on error correction reflects
experimental or analytical research techniques that
ignore classroom realities and the preferences of
students (e.g. Frantzen 1995; Polio et al. 1998;
Ferris & Roberts 2001; Chandler 2003). Such
approaches have their place, but they cannot capture
the impact that wider classroom, institutional and
personal contexts have on the ways feedback is given,
understood and negotiated between participants.
Sociocultural perspectives on learning therefore see
knowledge and understanding not as things that
can be handed down but as constructed through
interactive processes (Riazi 1997; Murphy 2000;
Goldstein 2006; Villamil & de Guerrero 2006).
Teachers respond to students in their comments as
much as texts, and experienced teachers often tailor
their feedback to suit each student, considering their
backgrounds, needs and preferences as well as the
relationship they have with them and the ongoing
dialogue between them (Ferris et al. 1997; F. Hyland
1998, 2001b). It may be, in other words, that what
is effective feedback for one student in one setting is
less so in another.
Context is a combination of factors related to the
institution and writing programme as well as those
that teachers and students bring to the interaction (F.
Hyland 1998, 2000a; K. Hyland & F. Hyland 2006b).
Goldstein (2004, 2005), for instance, suggests that
contextual factors can include socio-political issues
that influence teacher status and morale, available
resources and class size, institutional attitudes towards
L2 writers, exams, and program philosophies about
feedback. Similarly, teacher factors such as attitudes
towards particular students or the content of their
texts, and student factors like reactions to teacher
feedback and their investment in the course can have
an impact on feedback and revision. These factors
have not been systematically incorporated into most
feedback research designs, however, and we know
little about their potential impact on feedback and
student revision.
Attempts have been made, however, to link aspects
of teacher feedback with student revision. Ferris
(1997), for instance, looked at 110 first and second
drafts of papers by ESL tertiary students and found
that three quarters of substantive teacher comments
on the drafts were used by the students and they
tended to improve student papers. Very few of the
changes (less than 5%) actually had a negative effect,
but revisions based on comments in the question
form were judged as having mixed effects. Longer
and more detailed text specific comments were also
found to result in more positive revisions.
Researchers have also tried to find out what
kinds of comments are most effective. Ferris &
Hedgcock (2005) suggest text-specific commentary
is most likely to encourage revision. They also
make the point that marginal comments have more
immediacy and make it easier for students to locate
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the source of a problem and revise appropriately
whereas end comments can be more useful for
writing development, since they summarize major
problems. Marginal comments are also considered
to be more motivating since they show the reader
actively engaged with the writer’s text (Goldstein
2004). Conrad & Goldstein (1999) also question
the importance often attributed to comment type
in revision success. Their findings from three case
studies suggest that choosing to phrase comments
as questions, declaratives or imperatives had far less
impact on the success of revisions than the type
of problem identified in the feedback. Problems
dealing with facts and details in the content were
revised successfully about half the time, while those
dealing with argumentation and analysis were revised
successfully only 10% of time, a finding supported by
Ferris (2001). Problems dealing with facts and details
in the content were revised successfully about half the
time, while those dealing with argumentation and
analysis were revised successfully only 10% of time, a
finding supported by Ferris (2001).
A final key issue of students’ responses to teacher
feedback is that of ‘text appropriation’, or the idea
that ownership of writing can be ‘stolen’ from
a writer by the teacher’s comments. L1 writing
researchers have suggested that writers might follow
directive comments too closely and lose the opportunity to develop as writers by merely rewriting
their texts to reflect their teachers’ preoccupations
(Knoblauch & Brannon 1984). These concerns have
been raised in ESL discussions of feedback but have
been rigorously questioned by Reid who suggested
that text appropriation was ‘largely a mythical fear
of ESL writing teachers’ (1994: 275). She pointed
out the danger of confusing helpful intervention with
appropriation and urged ESL teachers to focus instead
on their roles as ‘cultural informants and as facilitators
for creating the social discourse community in the
ESL writing classroom’ (p. 275).
Appropriation and the socio-political aspects of
giving feedback do, however, continue to be debated
in the literature. F. Hyland (2000a) describes episodes
where teachers overrode student decisions on use of
feedback, raising issues relating to not just to the
ownership of writing but also to the ownership and
control of the revision processes, supporting Hall’s
(1995) point that appropriation may involve both
concepts of good and bad writing products and good
and bad writing behaviour.
Recently, the concept of appropriation has been
redefined with the suggestion that appropriation
can go in two directions. Appropriation of teacher
feedback can be an active strategy used by novice
academic writers as they develop their own voices and
their familiarity with different genres. Tardy (2006)
illustrates the complexity of this in her description of
Chatri, an engineering doctoral student, whose sense
of agency and ownership of his writing developed as
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he gained confidence over particular genres in specific
settings. When he approached less familiar genres,
he was more likely to adopt the words and ideas
of his supervisor and advisor, gradually becoming
a more independent writer as his sense of his own
expertise evolved. Tardy suggests that this situated
and fluid view of appropriation is important for any
future studies of feedback, as students in English
for Academic Purposes (EAP) classrooms often hold
more expertise in their subject-matter content than
their writing teachers.
2. Teacher conferencing and oral
feedback
While it is widely accepted that oral interaction
has an important role to play in the planning,
writing or revision stages of producing a text in L1
contexts (Bruffee 1984b), the scope and extent of its
contribution are still unclear, especially for L2 writers.
For many learners oral feedback takes place in writing
conferences where there is potential for meaning
and interpretation to be constantly negotiated.
Originating in L1 contexts, significant numbers of
L2 students now participate in writing conferences.
Powers & Nelson (1995) conducted a survey of
writing centres at graduate institutions across the
USA and discovered that a very large percentage of
requests for graduate student conferences at writing
centres was coming from L2 students, even though
most centres had not considered specific strategies
for these learners. However, as Williams & Severino
(2004) point out in their recent summary of writing
centre issues, empirical research on writing centres
and their effectiveness is surprisingly thin, despite a
Journal of Second Language Writing issue (13.3, 2004)
devoted entirely to writing centre research.
2.1 Effectiveness of oral feedback
Much of the literature focuses on advice for effective
writing centre practices and the ways that conferences
may need to be adapted to the L2 context. For
example, it has been argued that the standard nondirective ‘hands-off’ mode of tutoring in the L1
context is not appropriate and that a more directive
role for L2 tutors in their role as cultural and language
informants is required (Thonus 1999, 2001, 2003,
2004; Blau & Hall 2002). Blau & Hall (2002) suggest
that it may sometimes be necessary to reverse the
usual practice for writing discussions and start by
focusing on accuracy and formal issues then work
towards the development and organisation of content.
Some issues remain only partially answered,
especially the effectiveness of oral feedback for
improving students’ writing. It has been pointed
out that some L2 learners have cultural or social
inhibitions about engaging informally with authority
figures such as teachers, let alone questioning them,
and this can result in students passively and unreflect-
Feedback on L2 students’ writing
ively incorporating the teacher’s suggestions into
their work (Goldstein & Conrad 1990). Goldstein
& Conrad found that only those students who
negotiated meaning successfully in conferences were
able to carry out extensive and better revisions
to their writing. This finding was supported by
Williams (2004) who found greater uptake of tutor
advice in terms of revisions when tutor suggestions
were explicit, when students actively participated and
negotiated in the conferences, and when they wrote
down their plans during their sessions with tutors.
Williams noted that negotiation was important especially for higher level text-based revisions, although
her study suggested that the majority of revisions
linked to conferences were, in fact, surface level ones.
Patthey-Chavez & Ferris (1997) examined four
teachers’ writing conferences with a weaker and a
more able student and linked the topics discussed in
the conferences to student revision of their drafts.
They found that all eight students used the teachers’
suggestions in their revisions, but the weaker students
tended to follow advice far more closely. More able
students were more assertive and confident and often
used the teachers’ suggestions as a starting point for
their own changes. Patthey-Chavez & Ferris suggest
that with less able students there is more danger that
conferences will involve appropriation rather than
intervention. It may be worth noting that the findings
of all these studies are based on small numbers of
students and teachers, raising the question about the
influence of other contextual factors and the impact
of individual teachers’ conferencing approaches.
2.2 Interaction in writing conferences
Other research has focused on analysing the nature of
the interactions that take place in writing conferences
to try to uncover the elements that make for a
successful interaction. Some studies have explored the
purposes and roles of the tutor’s talk in conferences
(Harris 1995), and others have examined the topics
discussed in the sessions, suggesting that these
mainly focus on sentence level grammatical problems
(Aljaafreh & Lantolf 1994; Cumming & So 1996;
Williams 2002).
More pertinently, several studies have focused
specifically on the ways that meaning is negotiated in
conferences (Williams 2002, 2004; Weissberg 2006)
and the effects of these negotiations on students’
revisions of their texts (Goldstein & Conrad 1990;
Aljaafreh & Lantolf 1994). Another focus has been
on power and control of the conference dialogue,
including aspects such as the roles of the participants,
the length of turns, who initiates topics and the
relative percentages of the dialogue contributed by
tutors and students (Powers 1993; Cumming &
So 1996; Weigle & Nelson 2004) Comparisons
have also been made of the interactions of tutors
when conferencing with native and non-native tutees
(Thonus 2004). These studies suggest that control
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of most L2 interactions remains firmly in the hands
of the tutors, despite the collaborative ideals of the
writing conference.
A key focus in many studies is the Vygotskian
concept of scaffolding. This concept, also known
as ‘assisted performance’ (Ohta 2001), ‘negotiated
interaction’ (Long 1996), and ‘guided participation’
(Lave & Wenger 1991), encompasses the ways that
the feedback delivered through the dialogue between
teacher and student can enable the student writer
to develop both his or her text and writing abilities
(Williams 2002). However, despite the wide use of
this term in the literature, it still remains a rather
abstract concept. In order to help tutors provide
effective scaffolding, Aljaafreh & Lantolf (1994)
attempt to catalogue some of the characteristics of
effective scaffolding in an L2 context. They suggest
scaffolded help needs to be offered only when needed
and removed as soon as the learner is able to
function independently; graduated according to the
learner’s changing proficiency needs; and must be
given in a dialogic conversation actively involving
both teacher and student. Williams (2004) suggests
that teachers can scaffold interaction and the learner’s
movement towards autonomy by marking critical
features in the text, simplifying the task, and
‘modelling’ indirectly by eliciting an improved
performance from the writer.
Weissberg (2006) attempts to make the concept
of scaffolding more concrete by providing a detailed
examination of the ways that oral scaffolding can
work with L2 writers through a linguistic analysis of
interactions during four one-on-one, tutor-student
writing conferences. He operationalizes scaffolding
as a set of ‘observable discourse mechanisms’ which
can help tutors to improve the quality of their
interventions. Using data from the conferences, he
illustrates how a tutor creates verbal linkages to the
L2 writer through lexical and phrasal repetition,
questioning, phrase completion and extension,
summary and paraphrase statements, and statements
of personal affiliation. Such links are then used as a
springboard to make instructional points. Weissberg
however, cautions that although his data show a
tutor addressing student needs through interaction,
the impact of this scaffolding on student writing still
remains to be determined.
3. Peer feedback and self-evaluation
Strong justification for the use of peer response is
found in four theoretical stances: process writing,
collaborative learning, Vygotskian learning theory
and interactionist theories of L2 acquisition (Liu
& Hansen 2002). Peer response is seen as an
important support for the drafting and redrafting of
process approaches to writing (Zamel 1985; Mittan
1989). Collaborative learning theory (Bruffee 1984a)
encourages students to ‘pool’ their resources and
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both complete tasks they could not do on their
own, learning through dialogue and interaction with
their peers (Hirvela 1999). Vygotskian approaches
also underline the importance of social interaction
with peers as Vygotsky’s (1978) theoretical construct
of the Zone of Proximal Development suggests that
writing skills can emerge with the mediation and help
of others.
While not directly driving interest in peer feedback, interactionist perspectives offer an important
theoretical foundation for it by suggesting how
opportunities to negotiate meaning through group
work are a means of encouraging more effective
acquisition of the language (Long & Porter 1985).
Effective peer response is a key element of helping
novice writers to understand how readers see
their work. Interactional modifications can assist
acquisition by making input available and comprehensible while providing learners with important
opportunities for practice, for testing hypotheses
about language use against peers’ responses, and for
revision and writing in response to peer feedback. It
is therefore not surprising that peer response remains
a popular source of feedback in the L2 classroom and
a continuing area for research.
3.1 Effectiveness of peer response
The research literature claims many positive effects
for peer feedback in both L1 and L2 contexts. In
particular, it is seen as a way of giving more control
and autonomy to students since it involves them
actively in the feedback process as opposed to a
passive reliance on teachers’ feedback to ‘fix’ up their
writing (Mendoca & Johnson 1994). Freedman &
Sperling (1985), Mittan (1989) and Caulk (1994)
consider that peer response provides students with an
audience for their writing which is more authentic
than teacher response tends to be. It also enhances the
ability of peer reviewers to evaluate their own work
by providing a sense of audience and a checklist of
evaluative questions to apply to their own writing
(Stoddard & MacArthur 1993; Cheng & Warren
1996). Since student reviewers perceive that other
students experience the same difficulties in writing
that they do, peer feedback may also lead to a
reduction in writer apprehension and help them
to develop their autonomy and self-confidence as
writers (Chaudron 1984; Curtis 2001; Cotterall &
Cohen 2003;). Oral interactions with peers during
the writing process can also provide social and
affective support (Guerrero & Villamil 1994; F.
Hyland 2000b).
However, in the past decade, research has reassessed
the value of this type of response for ESL writers
and the assumption that what works well in the first
language classroom can be transferred wholesale to
the L2 context. Studies have questioned L2 students’
ability to offer useful feedback to each other and
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queried the extent to which students are prepared to
use their peers’ comments in their revisions. Mendoca
& Johnson’s (1994) study, for example, suggested
that students were very selective about using peer
comments in their revisions. Connor & Asenavage
(1994), moreover, claimed that peer feedback made
only a marginal difference to student writing, finding
that only 5% of revisions could be directly linked to
peer comments compared with 35% related to teacher
comments.
Two explanations have been given for this failure
to use peer feedback. First, student preferences and
their beliefs about the relative value of teacher
and peer feedback may impact on their use of
feedback. Nelson & Carson’s (1998) interviews with
L2 university students found that students preferred
teacher feedback and were much more likely to
incorporate it in their revisions. In Zhang’s (1995)
study of eighty-one college freshmen, 75% preferred
teacher feedback to all other forms. Students tend
to trust their teachers rather than their peers,
believing that the teacher is the expert whereas
their peers might not be knowledgeable enough to
diagnose their problems (Sengupta 1998). Tsui &
Ng (2000) found that Hong Kong secondary students
viewed the teacher as a ‘figure of authority that
guaranteed quality’ (p. 149) and were reluctant to
trust their peers. Second, there are questions about
the quality of peer feedback. Some researchers (Leki
1990; Nelson & Murphy 1992, 1993; Lockhart &
Ng 1993; Mendoca & Johnson 1994; F. Hyland
2000a) have found that students have problems
detecting errors and providing quality feedback,
sometimes resorting to formulaic comments on each
others’ writing, or they may give inappropriate
and over-critical feedback (Amores 1997) or overfocus on surface errors (McGroarty & Zhu
1997).
However, despite these issues, peer feedback is
still popular and many teachers and course designers
continue to incorporate it in their courses and to
report positive experiences from students. Liu (1997),
for instance, found students to be more positive
about peer response after a semester’s experience
of such sessions. Students had reservations about
trusting their peers’ comments and about their
peers’ ability to comment on subject areas they
did not specialise in, but felt they had benefited
from peer response at the textual, cognitive and
communicative levels. It has been suggested that
part of the reason for some of the negative findings
may be related to the framing of research questions.
Jacobs et al. (1998) argue that studies which ask
students to make a choice between teacher and peer
feedback are misleading, because peer and teacher
comments do not have to be mutually exclusive.
Their questionnaire survey of 121 L2 undergraduates
found that 93% of students wanted to have peer
feedback when it was given in conjunction with
Feedback on L2 students’ writing
teacher feedback, rather than instead of it, a finding
supported by Tsui & Ng (2000)’s study of secondary
students’ uses and attitudes to peer feedback in Hong
Kong, which also stressed the complementary roles
of the two feedback sources.
3.2 Training for peer response
One area of research has been to look at ways of
improving both the quality of written peer feedback
given and the quality of the peer interactions through
training and preparation. Studies generally suggest
that careful preparation and training are essential for
successful peer response. Stanley (1992), for instance,
found that a group of university ESL students
trained in peer evaluation offered more feedback
and couched it more tactfully than an untrained
control group and that student writers were more
likely to use the feedback in their revisions. Other
researchers have also found that students who have
been trained in peer response can provide useful
feedback to their peers (Hedgcock & Lefkowitz
1992; Berg 1999; Paulus 1999). One study by Zhu
(1995) examined the effects of training in small
groups and found that peer reviewers were not only
able to give more feedback but were also able to
negotiate in a more interactive manner than those
just watching a video demonstration of how to give
feedback.
Other studies have found that students who
receive peer review training generate significantly
more comments and more relevant and specific
comments (Min 2005) and that training promotes
more meaning-based suggestions resulting in higher
quality revisions (Berg 1999). An additional point
that should be made here is that training is also likely
to benefit student reviewers themselves as they are
then in a better position to view their own texts
from a reader’s perspective (F. Hyland 2003; Ferris
2004).
3.3 Collaboration and interaction in peer
response sessions
Another strand of research has adopted a Vygotskian
sociocultural framework to examine peer response
interactions and their effects on students’ writing.
Donato (1994) and other L2 writing researchers have
expanded the notion of scaffolding from the more
traditional view of the expert helping the novice
to move through the zone of proximal development
(Vygotsky 1978) to include ‘mutual’ peer scaffolding,
where help can go in both directions and both
parties are helping to extend each other’s writing
competence (Ohta 1995; DiCamilla & Antón 1997;
Antón & DiCamilla 1998; Lim & Jacobs 2001).
The idea that novice writers may actually benefit
from acting as peer readers has not, however, been a
major feature of the literature and this bi-directional
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tendency has tended to restrict our understanding
of genuine collaboration and mutually beneficial
interaction among peers. In addition, few studies have
looked at the revisions peers make in response to such
interactions so that the types of interactions which
might lead to successful revisions remain empirically
vague.
Some researchers have tried, however, to uncover
the way scaffolded peer assistance works by analysing
peer interactions, focusing on aspects such as the
functions and focuses of the interactions, the stances
taken by the reader and the group dynamics
(Mangelsdorf & Schlumberger 1992; Nelson &
Murphy 1992; Guerrero & Villamil 1994; Mendoca
& Johnson 1994; Lockhart & Ng 1995; Villamil &
Guerrero 1996; Guerrero & Villamil 2000). Despite
concerns about the dynamics of peer groups, some
studies have suggested that these can be positive. For
example, Guerrero & Villamil (2000) analysed dyadic
interactions in which the partners were revising a
narrative text written by one of them. They found
that almost 80% of interactions were collaborative,
and noted that successful peer dyads showed a
concern for not hurting each other’s feelings.
However, Villamil & Guerrero (2006) observe that
while collaborative interventions predominated in
this sample, they were working with a culturally
and linguistically homogeneous group of students
and such camaraderie might not be repeated in all
teaching contexts.
In fact, it has been acknowledged that peer
responders working in their L2 may lack communication and pragmatic skills for successful interaction
and because such students may come from different
cultural groups with different expectations about
interactions, this may also affect both the nature and
success of the interactions.
There has been a great deal of discussion about the
relationship between culture and feedback, especially
in terms of peer feedback. Cross-cultural issues are
seen as an especially important consideration when
organising ESL peer response groups (Carson &
Nelson 1994, 1996; Nelson & Carson 1995; Nelson
1997). According to Allaei & Connor (1990:24),
‘conflict, or at the very least, high levels of discomfort
may occur in multi-cultural collaborative peer
response groups’ and several studies have explored
this possibility. Nelson & Murphy (1992, 1993), for
instance, found that students from different cultures
had different expectations about such elements as
the roles of group members, the mechanics of the
group and politeness strategies. Nelson & Carson
(1998) suggest that students from ‘collectivist’ cultural
orientations such as China and Japan often focus
on group consensus and seek to avoid threatening
group cohesion by suggesting changes to peers’
texts. Nelson & Carson (2006) argue that linguistic
and cultural homogeneity may be an important
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contributing factor in successful peer response group
interaction, perhaps because it is easier to maintain
face in a group with speakers of the same language and
cultural backgrounds who will better understand the
nuances of each other’s messages, helping to maintain
group harmony.
This use of the concept of culture as an explanatory
factor in ESL interactions is a controversial one which
has been criticized by postmodern and poststructuralist theorists as essentialist and reductionist, not
allowing for individual variation. Atkinson (1999)
and Clifford (1992) have suggested using the
term ‘identity’ for culture to avoid accusations of
stereotyping. This issue is debated in detail in Nelson
& Carson (2006) and is one with important implications for further research focusing on peer
feedback.
3.4 Self-evaluation
Students can make their own revisions without
feedback and improve their writing significantly. It
is therefore important not to overlook the writers
themselves as critical readers and reviewers of their
own texts. Educational research also suggests that
feedback is more effective when information is
gathered from the subjects themselves as well as others
(Brinko 1993). In fact, most writing teachers would
acknowledge that the ultimate aim of any form of
feedback should be to move students to a more
independent role where they can critically evaluate
their own writing and intervene to change their own
processes and products where necessary.
To do this, students need to develop metacognitive
skills. Beach & Eaton (1984) have suggested a link
between lack of substantive revision and a lack of
the skills to critically self assess one’s work in first
language contexts. Researchers in L1 contexts argued
that this might be partially the result of age and
level of development, but there might also be a need
for specific training or instruction in self-assessment
techniques: for example, Bereiter & Scardamalia’s
(1987) use of procedural facilitation techniques and
cueing for a development of revision strategies. A
problem with self-evaluation for many writers is the
difficulty of reading one’s own text with the critical
detachment of an outside reader. It has been claimed
that instruction can assist the development of this
critical detachment and is therefore a valuable, if
indirect, source of feedback.
It has, however, been pointed out that strategy
instruction or prompt techniques to encourage selfassessment are often quite mechanical and may
fail to take account of the students’ own goals
and the context in which they are working.
Peck (1990) examined the effects of prompts on
revisions to an interpretative essay, using a broadranging and open-ended prompt. He found that
■
writers’ revising behaviour varied not just because
of differences in knowledge about revising and in
writing competence, but because individual writers
brought their own goals to the writing process and
represented the task in different ways. Cumming
& So (1996) compared tutoring sessions for ESL
students on their writing using conventional error
correction and procedural facilitation prompts and
found that in both cases the teachers and students
focused primarily on local errors. It seems that
strategy instruction techniques are limited in their
ability to improve students’ revising skills due to
their tendency to reduce complex processes to a
simplistic formula. Perhaps more promising for selfevaluation, and discussed in the next section below,
are computer-assisted packages and prompts which
the students can use as a resource for checking their
own writing.
There are also promising developments in selfevaluation and reflection via portfolio writing and
other reflective course designs. For example, Johns
(2006) describes a project she used successfully: the
I-Search Paper, which requires extensive student
reflection after the completion of a research writing
task. The I-Search was originally designed by
Macrorie (1980) to encourage student reflection and
develop writer autonomy and gives students many
opportunities to reflect upon their research and
writing processes. From her experiences using this
project with mainly L2 students, Johns (2006) argues
that the process of completing this process helped
her students to develop motivation, confidence,
self-reflection, and meta-awareness skills and, thus,
encouraged writer autonomy.
4. Computer-mediated feedback
As technology develops and computer facilities
become more widely available, the role of the
computer in both delivering and mediating feedback
has become more visible in practice and research.
Partly driven by the rapid advance of educational
technologies and partly by a marked increase in the
provision of distance courses and on-line research
supervision, students now often find themselves
reading feedback on their electronically submitted
essays which has been produced by an unseen
tutor, by their peers, or by the computer itself.
Nor is computer feedback restricted to distance
students, as learners increasingly exchange texts and
comments with each other and with teachers through
computer networks in writing workshops. Precisely
how computers are used, however, largely depends on
the underlying assumptions that teachers hold about
literacy and language learning (Warschauer 2002),
and we must always bear in mind that computers
are tools and not a single instructional method. In
this section we examine these key areas of electronic
Feedback on L2 students’ writing
feedback and the research which explores its diversity
and effectiveness.
4.1 Computer conferencing
The most widely employed use of computers for
language teaching is that provided by the connectivity
of networked computers. This offers two broad
options, either synchronous writing, where
students communicate with each other or the tutor
in real time via discussion software on Local Area
Networks or internet chat sites; and asynchronous
writing, where students communicate in a delayed
way, such as via email. Educators teaching online have
began to see that computer-mediated communication (CMC) brings significant changes to the social
dimension of learning, and claims have been made
that this can empower students and make writing
classes more collaborative.
Warschauer, Turbee & Roberts (1996), for
instance, suggest that CMC allows students to take
a more active and autonomous role when seeking
feedback, since they can raise questions when they
want to and take the initiative in discussions. Student
conferencing is also said to make discussion more
‘student centred’, foster a sense of community, encourage a sense of group knowledge, and increase
student participation, since there are more opportunities for student-student interaction with the
teacher as facilitator (Plass & Chun 1996; KahmiStein 2000; Warschauer 2002). Other researchers
have highlighted the dialogic role of asynchronous
CMC and its potential to scaffold understanding
of disciplinary knowledge and disciplinary writing
characteristics (Hewings & Coffin 2006).
It is also the case that a network can make student
writing more widely available and so provide an
audience of peers beyond the instructor, helping
to create a greater awareness of audience and
communicative purpose (Ware 2004). This kind of
networked communication is said to motivate less
proficient students (Warschauer 2002; Greenfield
2003) and provide a non-threatening environment
for students to practice their literacy skills and receive
peer feedback on their work (Colomb & Simutis
1996). Finally, some researchers argue that it can
lead to better writing products and more focused and
better quality peer feedback (Sullivan & Pratt 1996;
Braine 1997). Tuzi (2004), for instance, found that
e-feedback helped L2 writers focus on larger chunks
of writing and work on macro-revisions.
For teachers, the use of networked computers
assists the efficient exchange of student drafts
(Palmquist 1993) and more easily facilitates the
monitoring of peer feedback, as teachers can more
easily switch between different screens than they
can get around to a large number of small faceto-face groups (DiGiovanni & Nagaswami 2001).
One major advantage of electronic conferencing
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feedback is that comments are automatically stored
for later retrieval, allowing instructors to print out the
transcripts for in-class discussion. This kind of analysis
of student writing can help build metacognitive
awareness of particular linguistic, interactional and
rhetorical features (Swaffar et al. 1998; Lamy &
Goodfellow 1999; Sengupta 2001). Teachers can
use this database of transcripts to increase students’
autonomy in correcting errors and in reflecting on
their writing, and this can also have dramatic payoffs
in self-feedback, and learner awareness of error (Yuan
2003). A down-side however, is that students may
be overwhelmed by the commentary they receive
on their work, making meaningful revisions more
difficult.
Research has also addressed real-time synchronous
communication via computer networks, especially
the role of peer conferencing on writing (Heift
& Caws 2000). DiGiovanni & Nagaswami (2001),
for instance, found that students were more focused
when providing feedback during real time electronic
interaction than when engaging in traditional faceto-face peer revision groups. Similarly, in an
experimental study, Schultz (2000) discovered that
students made more specific, local changes online
and more global changes in the face-to-face mode.
This seemed to be because the online revisers were
able to save and follow the detailed suggestions made
in writing, while the face-to-face writers’ global
changes were facilitated by the more rapid back-andforth interaction. Students who received feedback
in both modes made the most productive use of
feedback.
There are, however, some concerns about CMC
as a substitute for more traditional forms of feedback.
Belcher (1999), for example, has cautioned that CMC
can disadvantage the technologically challenged and
Lindblom-Ylanne & Pihlajamaki (2003) observed
that their Finnish students felt threatened by sharing
their drafts with peers in this way. van der Geest &
Remmers (1994) found the benefits of computermediated peer review offset by technical problems
while Braine (1997, 2001) discovered that students in
a face-to-face class produced better quality essays by
the end of the semester than students in a LANmediated class. He attributes this to the fact that
students seemed to have difficulties in following the
rush of multiple discussion threads of online writing.
This is a finding echoed by Liu & Sadler (2003)
who found that students using CMC, especially those
using real-time communication in online chat rooms,
made a greater number of comments, but these were
more superficial and less helpful for revisions, perhaps
due to the pressure to respond immediately. Face-toface interaction resulted in a more positive response
with more focused feedback and more questions and
interaction among peers.
Clearly, many of these difficulties are software
and training related. With better designed software
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making navigation and communication easier,
electronic peer and teacher review is likely to play
a more important role in the feedback process,
particularly if it is combined with traditional faceto-face activities rather than as a replacement for
them. Of greatest importance, however, is that these
technological tools are likely to offer their greatest
benefits when they are integrated into the curriculum
and closely matched to instructional purposes (K.
Hyland 1993; Phinney & Khouri 1993; Greenleaf
1994; Warschauer 1999).
Beyond LAN-mediated peer and teacher reviewing, the internet provides a context for L2
students to engage in personal communication and
to receive feedback from native-speaking peers
(Kern & Warschauer 2000). Through various
websites, students can find ‘key pals’, or one-toone email partners, in order to communicate in
the target language with native language partners.
By using language for real communication in these
electronically mediated interactions, students appear
to produce more output and report being more
motivated to write (Barson, Frommer & Schwartz
1993; Meagher & Castaños 1996; Warschauer 1997).
Tella (1992), for instance, found that students not only
wrote in a wider range of genres and used a larger
vocabulary using email when communicating with
L1 English speakers, but that classroom instruction
was no longer teacher-directed and so provided more
opportunities for individualized, learner-centred
workshops. More widely, these kinds of interaction
not only offer feedback on writing but also on L2
development and intercultural communication skills
themselves (e.g. Liu et al. 2002; O’Dowd 2003).
4.2 Automated feedback
Another area with a growing impact on feedback
practices is the development of sophisticated software
capable of scanning student texts and generating
immediate evaluative comments on them. Different
types of feedback are offered by such programmes,
ranging from individual reports on grammatical
errors, targeting ESL students (Liou 1994; Warden
& Chen 1995), to holistic assessments of content,
organization, and mechanics (Burston 2001).
Eventually such programmes may assist teachers with
the burdens imposed by growing class sizes and
increasing expectations for individualised support.
In these circumstances, automated essay evaluation
might be seen as a cost effective way of replacing
or enhancing direct human input. For teachers they
hold out the possibility of respite from the hours
spent commenting on student papers, allowing them
to focus on other aspects of their teaching, and for
students they may provide more extensive feedback
in a much shorter turn-around time.
At the moment, however, the main impetus
for the development and use of these programmes
comes from large international language testing
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organizations which are increasingly delivering
products such as IELTS and TOEFL electronically
across the world. Their goal is to be able to
accurately and economically rank content-restricted
essays automatically (Valenti, Neri & Cucchiarelli
2003), and as a result, much of the current research on
automated feedback tends to focus on its efficiency
in offering summative feedback on limited aspects of
writing performance.
Among the best known of these automated
feedback systems are the Criterion e-rater developed by the Educational Testing Services (ETS) and MY
Access! developed by Vantage Learning. The e-rater
(Burstein 2003; Burstein, Chodorow & Leacock
2004), for example, scans a student text and provides
a holistic score with real-time feedback on grammar,
usage, style, organization and development. Other
kinds of automated feedback programmes, such as
the Respond module of the Daedalus Integrated Writing
Suite (Daedalus 2005), provides a heuristic for selfevaluation. This steers students through an evaluative
process using a series of modifiable prompts as
learners revise their drafts, with questions appearing
in the upper half of a window and students responding
in the lower half while consulting their text in another
window.
Such programmes are relatively new and their
impact on the development of L2 writing has yet
to be systematically evaluated. Generally, automated
response programmes have been criticized for being
unreliable (Krishnamurthy 2005) and realising poor
pedagogic principles (Chapelle 2001), so whether
the statistical techniques they use can provide
useful feedback on L2 writing is an open question
(Hearst 2000). We might also wonder whether such
automated feedback systems will ever be able to deal
with more than a few, very narrow and questionably
useful genres. In fact, many developers of automated
feedback software insist that computer-generated
feedback should only be considered a supplement
to, rather than a substitute for, classroom instruction
(Burstein & Marcu 2003; Burstein et al. 2004).
In particular, there is little research on the
social, cognitive and communicative dimensions of
automated feedback or on the potential dangers
of ignoring meaning negotiation in real world
contexts or the effects of isolated learning. Perhaps
more seriously, while they go beyond the often
misleading and prescriptive information provided by
early grammar checkers, these programmes tend to
treat writing as mastery of a set of sub-skills, laying
particular emphasis on grammatical correctness. In
the automated context, writing is not evaluated
as real interaction designed to achieve different
communicative purposes with different audiences
but as a performance artefact of student mastery
of grammar, usage, and organization. So while it
remains unclear what specific advantages these new
products will offer, the dangers of such systems
Feedback on L2 students’ writing
emphasising formulaic writing which better lends
itself to systematic codification cannot be overestimated (Ware & Warshauer 2006).
4.3 Corpora-based feedback
The use of language corpora and concordancing
offers one of the most exciting applications of
new technologies to the writing class, providing
teachers with evidence of language use not available
from other sources and moving away from pre-programmed CALL to redefine the computer as a tool.
Electronic corpora are becoming increasingly
important in L2 writing instruction as teaching
becomes less a practice of imparting knowledge and
more one of providing opportunities for learning.
Essentially, a corpus is a collection of relevant texts
which can be computer searched for particular words,
phrases or grammatical patterns using concordancing
software to reveal their frequency and regular patterns
of use with other forms. Corpora offer exciting
possibilities for innovative uses of feedback in
two main ways. First, by making corpus evidence
accessible during the writing process itself to increase
learner autonomy and self-feedback on their work;
and second, by offering teacher feedback which
links electronically submitted writing directly to a
concordance file.
Integrating concordancing software into the
writing process can give students direct access to
corpus information as they write. This offers L2
novice writers a cognitive support tool with which
to check their evolving language hypotheses. There
are a growing number of online resources that can
be exploited to help students self-edit in this way,
including search engines such as Google (Joyce &
Weil 2000). More targeted text-retrieval sites can
help students clarify the strong selectional restrictions
of specific words in more specific and relevant
contexts. These include WordPilot 2000 (Milton
1999), Check my words (Milton 2006) and Word
neighbors (Milton 2004) all of which create a macro
in word processing programmes so that writers are
able to call up a concordance for a word by double
clicking while they are typing. This gives them
frequency and contextual information about words
and expressions when they need it.
More widely used are corpus-linked programmes
which help teachers provide resource-assisted
feedback. Encouraging students to submit their
writing electronically allows teachers to hyperlink
errors in an essay directly to a concordance file where
students can examine the contexts and collocations
of the words they have misused (Milton 1999;
K. Hyland 2003). A sophisticated version of this
is Milton’s (2006) Mark my words, which allows
teachers to insert customizable comments in any
language in the student’s electronic document and
to link the comments to the online resources
including corpus data. The program can identify
95
K. Hyland & F. Hyland
word classes and lexical patterns and shortlist
suggested comments when the teacher right-clicks
the mouse, so minimizing the time needed to insert
comments while guiding teachers who are unsure
of grammatical terminology in selecting appropriate
comments. There is some preliminary evidence that
students are able to benefit from this kind of feedback.
Todd (2001), for example, reports a study in Thailand
where students were able to make inductive decisions
about language use and to self-correct their common
lexical errors after they had made small concordances
of these items on the internet. Gaskell & Cobb (2004)
also report learner self-correction of grammatical
errors after tutors pasted in links to an online
concordance to facilitate feedback and reflection.
While the impact of these tools is an area for
further investigation, they appear to offer considerable promise for supporting teacher feedback with
authentic language data. By relieving students of
the need to accept the teacher’s editing of their
words, teachers can relinquish some control and
allow students to make their own decisions about
revising their texts, based on both the feedback
and the authentic data. This encourages a reflective,
active response to a teacher’s feedback which can be
extremely useful for raising students’ awareness of
genre-specific conventions, developing independent
learning skills, and improving writing products.
5. Indications for future research
While the research into feedback on L2 students’
writing has increased dramatically in the last decade,
it is clear that the questions posed at the beginning
of this paper have not yet been completely answered.
There are, for example, still uncertainties concerning
the most effective ways of responding to different
text features, the role of context, personal preference
and interpersonal factors in giving and responding
to feedback, and the best ways to employ peer
and oral feedback. Nor are we a lot closer to
understanding the long term effects of feedback on
writing development. On the plus side, however,
feedback studies have moved away from a narrow
obsession with the effectiveness of error correction
and the practice of peer feedback to embrace a new
range of issues, so that we are now more aware of
the potential of oral conferencing and computermediated feedback, of the importance of exploring
student preferences and responses to feedback, and
the role of wider social, institutional and interactional
factors on feedback and its uptake. The research also
points to some promising lines of future research.
One obvious direction for such research is towards
more systematic and comprehensive descriptions of
the contextual environments in which feedback
is given and used. Contextual factors which are
likely to repay further investigation include the
relationship between classroom instruction and
96
■
teachers’ comments, the impact of various individual,
social and cultural issues on both teacher commentary
and student revision, and the role of local institutional
constraints. These features also need to be considered
together with more research designed to understand
the longitudinal effects of teacher comments on
student writing, focusing on questions such as what
types of feedback lead to writing development over
time and whether revisions to drafts show improvement in later writing situations.
Since the most important role of response is to help
students to develop into independent writers who
are able to critique and improve their own writing,
another key area of research is the need for studies
into the role of feedback in promoting autonomous
writing skills. In particular, we believe that research
into peer feedback and self-evaluation is likely to yield
useful results in how response might lead to greater
independence, while further work is also needed into
what aspects students can revise without help from
their teachers. Do some areas seem more accessible
to self-assessment and, if so, which areas are these?
As we have seen, the research on oral feedback
in writing is still quite limited and the effects of
oral response on revision and longer-term writing
improvement have not been fully investigated. Both
teachers and students tend to be positive about the
opportunities for detailed discussion that conferences
offer, but conferences vary considerably in the extent
to which they improve student writing, and the
literature does not yet provide the kind of guidance
that teachers need to be confident in their planning
and interactions. More studies are required on
students’ perceptions of oral conferences, how they
might best be prepared to make the most of them,
and the effects of oral responses not just on immediate
revisions, but on the longer term development of
students as writers. Related to these issues, we also
need research which tracks how, why and when
writers respond favourably to oral and peer feedback
over prolonged periods, particularly as writers’ beliefs
are likely to play an important part in this.
A final key area for research must be the potential
of automated essay evaluation and computermediated feedback for improving student writing
and developing their independent writing skills.
We have little information on students’ views
of these programs or the effects of computergenerated response, so research examining students’
perceptions, and use, of electronic feedback systems
in naturalistic settings is needed. Since there are
likely to be many developments in such software in
coming years, this will be a prime area of research
related to feedback as will further research on areas of
computer feedback such as online social interaction
and revision practices. Research is sure to continue
in a range of areas related to computer feedback
as technology changes our conceptions of both
instruction and L2 literacy and as teachers continue
■
to integrate technology into their writing classrooms.
Most importantly however, future research into
computer-mediated response, like all the forms of
feedback we have discussed in this review, must as
far as possible seek to integrate response, instruction,
revision and writing development in its focus and
the cultural, institutional and social dimensions of
feedback in its design.
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